Design Diaries: Secluding the Outpost

When setting out to finish the Onyx Edition arc, one of the things we decided early on not to do was touch Onyx Edition itself. It was pretty much done, to the point where art had been done and flavor text had mostly been penned out. It still stands up well after all this time as a strong base for the arc, and even now we see very little that needed changing.

However.

One card in particular we felt, after years of hindsight, and fresh rounds of testing, simply should not be in Onyx base, and thus we made the decision to replace it. That card was Secluded Outpost. Its hyper efficiency aside, there were several degenerate interactions with it and certain other cards that, while not game breaking, were not intended and were problematic. Its hyper efficiency was also effectively warping most deck construction, as it became practically an auto-include in almost every deck.